Can a Garmin footpod be used as a cadence sensor on a stationary (spinning) bike?
Also, can it easily be attached to a cycling shoe with velcro straps?
Thanks.
I tried this, but it seemed to measure lower cadence… for instance on one ride looking through the data my max cadence was 100, when I know for certain (bike computer) I maintained 110 for a section. Interested to hear others’ experiences tho.
I have left it on while using a gym bike when traveling before and it just doesn’t work very well, if at all.
The below is from a 75 minute ride with 10 x 1min hill intervals thrown into the middle. Cadence during the intervals was around 75-80. Other than that it should have been about 95 rpm.
As you can see, this didn’t give any useful information.
This is just guessing, but the smooth circles of the pedal stroke don’t provide the right type of feedback to the footpod to get something.
If it didn;t work for me on an elliptical, I have even less belief that it will work on a bike of any kind.
I have left it on while using a gym bike when traveling before and it just doesn’t work very well, if at all.
The below is from a 75 minute ride with 10 x 1min hill intervals thrown into the middle. Cadence during the intervals was around 75-80. Other than that it should have been about 95 rpm.
As you can see, this didn’t give any useful information.
This is just guessing, but the smooth circles of the pedal stroke don’t provide the right type of feedback to the footpod to get something.
Garmin’s footpod uses accelerometers (and probably gyros as well, although I haven’t taken a foot pod apart to see what chips they’re using) to determine foot strike, pushoff, etc. I’ve got a project at work on indoor inertial position tracking that does similar things to what I think Garmin is is doing but with much more expensive hardware than the consumer-grade stuff that Garmin uses. A key step (if you’ll pardon the pun) in this approach is that once your foot lands on the ground, for a brief instant it’s acceleration and velocity with respect to the ground is 0. Two things have to happen by the time you next push off - 1) you need to do the double integration of the acceleration data to determine the change in position from the last foot strike (since acceleration is the 2nd derivative of position) and 2) you need to re-zero out the error that has accumulated since the last footstrike. Cycling doesn’t produce the same acceleration profile that running does, but I’d expect a slower cadence and less smooth circle style of pedaling to work better for cadence determination.
if the spinning bike is yours and not one you are using at a gym, then one option is to get a cheap speedometer and set the wheel circumfrence to the correct number (i think it’s 166?) then put the magnet and pick up on the cranks and the speed will be cadence. ie. 8.2mph will be 82rpms.
regards
Funny, I’ve seen nearly identical results as you.
As one who spends a lot of time on hotel bikes, I’ve occasionally tinkered with trying to figure out how to retrofit both a cadence sensor and speed sensor onto stationary bikes. I’ve played around with a few ideas, but none that quite seem universal or easy to change bike to bike. I think if I had one at home I could get it nailed down closer, but having all the right tools at a hotel to make something is tough.
That’s what I thought.
Thanks guys for the replies.